2 Ways Homeschooling Will Give Your Kids an Advantage

If you’ve wondered why many parents have chosen to homeschool their kids, you might be surprised to learn there’s more to it than just being able to control the content of the curriculum. Deciding to homeschool can provide you as a parent with the ability to design a more faith-centered curriculum, obviously, but you can also enjoy greater freedom in the ways you may educate your kids.

For example, physical education in the public schools hasn’t changed much in decades. Students get lined up to run laps and try various sports like basketball, football, and track and field.

Everyone typically has to do whatever’s on the agenda for the day, and anyone who doesn’t gets marked down. What if your child doesn’t like to run but loves skateboarding? When you homeschool, your son or daughter’s love for skateboarding can count as physical education.

Homeschooling was the original version of education

Although homeschooling seems foreign to many Americans today, public schools didn’t always exist. Homeschooling was the way kids got their education in the past.

Though critics disagree that homeschooled children can receive a higher quality or education than kids in public school, plenty of benefits can be cited to dispute that argument. The biggest have to do with the fact that public education is typically structured in a way that makes it difficult for kids to explore their unique interests and potentials.

By the time they’re finished for the day, budding scholars don’t often have enough energy to pursue other interests. But when you homeschool, you can integrate your kids’ particular interests into their education.

In addition to supporting kids in their personal interests as part of their training, here are two more substantial benefits to homeschooling.

1. You control how their days are structured and scheduled

When your kids are enrolled in the traditional public education system, their entire day is structured in a specific way that is not negotiable. They have the same routine every day for years on end. They get up at the same time, start their first class at the same time, and eat lunch at the same time. Then they move from class to class for intervals of roughly 45 minutes until it’s time to go home.

When you homeschool, you are in charge of designing and maintaining the schedule, and you’re not wedded to a routine. Being able to create your own schedule enables you to allow more free time to expand your kids’ minds and add supplemental activities to their day: activities and lines of inquiry they’re often too tired to tackle when they’re enrolled in traditional schools.

In the normal public classroom setting, if your child excels in math and ought to be moved to another level, the option to progress when your kid is ready may not be available. But when you homeschool, the moment you see your child is ready to move on, you can get him or her a tutor or try some math DVDs to help your scholar learn without having to wait for some administrator to approve it and find a suitable instructor.

Anything outside the norm for most of the school population may become extremely baroque for the system to address … but you can do it easily.

2. Hands-on experience is based on your child’s interests

Maria Montessori detailed the connection between the mind and the physical body in her book titled The Secret of Childhood, where she said, “movement, or physical activity, is thus an essential factor in intellectual growth, which depends upon the impressions received from outside. Through movement we come in contact with external reality, and it is through these contacts that we eventually acquire even abstract ideas.”

Hands-on experience is far more effective than reading textbooks and memorizing facts. There’s a huge difference between reading about how a bird builds a nest and actually watching one do it live by gathering all the materials and carrying them over to the nest, piece by piece, and constructing it.

When kids learn about insects and birds in the classroom, they don’t necessarily get taken to a park for an opportunity to spot the birds they’ve been studying. It takes time, energy, and money to go on field trips in a large group. If any field trips are arranged, they are apt to be limited and few.

When you homeschool, however, you can teach your kids about local birds, insects, and other animals, then take them to the park to see how many critters they can spot. You can teach your kids about Paris or the Grand Canyon and actually go there if you’ve got the funds.

You can have your kids apply hands-on learning to just about anything they’re interested in (short of dinosaurs or space travel!) without having to settle for what the school has to offer. Kids will be far more excited to explore their own interests.

Admittedly, homeschooling has many pros and cons, so it’s necessary to take your individual circumstances into account before you make any significant decisions. But the benefits of homeschooling your kids can last a lifetime and set them up for success far beyond their academic years.